O days when the world was fair and strange,
and strange stars blazed in the Southern night.
Ghostly scent of pine from the canopy
shrouding the encampment; strange landscape,
strange birds, unknown back home, smoke rising
from half-extinguished fires. These long veins
of memory, monstrous harmonies
chiming and vanishing, phantoms of blood,
all that was gracious, unwizarded,
poured out like Death bestowing his gifts
on the battlefield. The harsh features
of the later world, drear and somber,
I willingly surrender to the prelude.